In a mathematical oddity, LA is going to lose money moving to free software. The city decided to head over to Gmail to cut costs in their time of dire budget straits.
However, it is going to end up spending 1.5 million dollars more it would have cost to keep their old legacy system.
Why, you may ask? It turns out that explaining Gmail to the employees of a city takes something called “training.” At first I was confused, given that Gmail is one of the simplest and most intuitive products ever created.
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That must be the problem.
If you had been using Outlook, or god forbid Thunderbird for any period of time, to move to Gmail would be shocking. Where are all the bugs? Where are all the things that must be worked around to get something done? There are none? Quick, I need training.
Of course, some people never want to switch. Just look through your website’s statistics and find the guy on Windows 95. Some folks are just a touch slow.
Since Gmail will raise expenditures by $1.5 million, the total training cost must be higher than that. Subtract that savings of free software, and then find the difference.
Let’s say three million dollars. What could that possibly be spent on? Here, have some training. There we go, money saved. LA, really?
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